[A] Father Henry Garnet, S.J., landed in England in 1586 along with the gifted Robert Southwell, whose prose and poetical works belong to English literature. Father Weston was then the Jesuit Superior. Father John Gerard landed, along with Father Edward Oldcorne, off the coast of Norfolk, in August, 1588, shortly after the decisive fight with the Spanish Armada, off Gravelines. As illustrating the conscientiousness and courage of this Yorkshire Elizabethan Jesuit, the following quotation from Foley, vol. iv., p. 210, may be of interest: “Father Oldcorne was employed sometime in London by Father Garnet, diligently labouring in the quest and salvation of souls. He was ever of a most ready wit, and endeavoured as far as possible to adapt himself to the manner of those with whom he lived. There were exceptions, however, in which, consumed with an ardent zeal of asserting and defending the Divine honour, he could not refrain from correcting those whom he heard uttering obscene and injurious language either towards God or their superiors. When in London, in the house of a Catholic gentleman, he struck with his fist and broke into pieces a pane of stained or painted glass representing an indecent picture of Venus and Mars, which he considered wholly unfit for the eyes of a virtuous family.”
[The curious philosopher wonders whether this Elizabethan Catholic gentleman, having been deprived of his “Venus and Mars” in such a high-handed fashion, afterwards became anti-Jesuitical.]
Therefore is it, alike by evidence and reason, borne in upon the mind of the philosopher that, on grounds of
probability so high as to afford practical certitude, he may proceed to build his argument upon the assumption that Edward Oldcorne was a man not only of intellectual acumen but also of moral integrity, as has been already predicated of him.
CHAPTER LXI.
Now, in the first part of his Declaration, Father Oldcorne uttered concerning the Gunpowder Plot a proposition which expressed partial truth alone. Because he expressed truth in the abstract only, not truth in the concrete also, concerning that nefarious scheme.
In other words, Father Oldcorne severed in thought the two kinds of truth, the two aspects of truth, the two parts of truth, which being unified gave the whole truth respecting the moral mode of judging the Gunpowder Treason Plot.
Oldcorne severed concrete truth from abstract truth,[A] practical truth from speculative truth, and so far as his hearer, Humphrey Littleton, was concerned, held that concrete truth, that practical truth, suspended at the sword-point over Littleton’s head.